


but you could be anyone

by copperiisulfate



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Gen, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 21:43:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15204098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperiisulfate/pseuds/copperiisulfate
Summary: we’ll grow out of this,you think.





	but you could be anyone

 

it’s hard to lose him in this town, these circles being the size they are. 

you’ve got a few months left of school and then you’re going to leave this place and everything that came with it. the modeling gig will pay for the apartment at first, and in the city, there will be the promise of more: distractions, occupations, something or other. you have to believe in this. you  _have_ to. 

(it shouldn’t feel like betrayal, and yet.)   

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

he watches you from across the room in your last night in this town. it may as well be from across the river, an ocean, a universe, all of its distance and stars scattered beneath your feet and between you.

he wants you and his eyes say as much. you’ve seen this and know this and there are ten thousand separate things about it that you can’t stand.

it’s  _conditional_ , besides.

and somehow, that helps? or so you tell yourself. it would be harder otherwise, everything on top of the leaving too.

you wouldn’t dream of asking him to choose between you and his family. you know that you have no right, just as he has no right to turn you into someone else, shape you into a creature of his own making, no matter the motive.

 _that’s not how wanting works,_  you want to tell him, but wonder: who are you to tell him.

it’s the only dialect he has ever known and you hardly have enough fluency in the language to begin with. 

another thousand reasons, you tell yourself, that it will never work (though it doesn’t stop his smile from burning behind your eyelids all the same).

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 _we’ll grow out of this_ , you think.

at least he will, you think. 

some day, you might grow out of it too.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

you take the train the next morning and there’s an ache behind your eyes. it’s just lack of rest or all the noise or the way you slept all wrong the night before (could hardly sleep at all) or perhaps the way in which you’re sitting, facing east but going west at dawn–

you dig your palms against your eyelids, see black, see stars.

–it must just be the sun in your eyes again, or perhaps the scenery, the way the trees flit by, creating the illusion that you’re moving backwards in time.

leaving is only hard at first, or so they say. it’s supposed to get easier with time, with more distance behind you. sooner or later there will be light years behind you, leaving all the shapes and all the faces unrecognizable. 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

the next time you see him, his hair is long and there’s a protective charm over his eye.

with his other eye, he sees right through you.

you study your reflection a beat longer that evening in the mirror. the salamander skitters across your face then down your arm as you cover your eye with a hand then uncover it.  

no, it shouldn’t feel like betrayal.  

**Author's Note:**

> written for the 'day 6: exorcists' prompt of natsumeweek 2018 on tumblr. title and ambience borrowed from f+tm's sky full of song.


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